Your guesses on Secret Leopard functionality

jcart12 · #1 February 28th, 2007, 02:48 AM

Well we are still waiting to know what secret functionality will be added to Leopard. My guesses

1. Aqua replaced with 3D interface. i.e. instead of window, we will have cubes. Finder will be replaced with an app that manages files in stacks based on spotlight meta-tags (Good bye to folders forever!).

2. Hand gestures incorporated into OS. Apple will release a new range of touch sensitive cinema displays at the same time.

What do you think?

jcart12 · #2 February 28th, 2007, 02:53 AM

Just a caveat,
Don't want to know about supporting apps. Yeah we know about iChat etc. However that aint part of the OS. In addition yeah I'm a geek like you, but I can't imagine Jobs announcing to the general public, wee geez we have now incorporated Sun ZFS into the the underlying file system! It's too geeky and most people wouldn't have a clue what he was talking about.

Of course there could be nothing new and he was just pulling out collective leg. However I doubt it......

Tommo · #3 February 28th, 2007, 04:23 AM

I'd settle for backwards compatibility with all existing OSX applications, now that really would be a first.

Damrod · #4 February 28th, 2007, 04:32 AM

ZFS would be a nice feature though, the specs and features of the FS read very interesting

ora · #5 February 28th, 2007, 04:37 AM

Tommo, I can't imagine 10.5 would be incompatible with 10.4, instead I'll get worries about that when we get to Mac OS XI.

Jcart, those features sounds fun but i can't believe they wouldn't have been seen in the developer betas, I'd guess the extra features will be more discrete, like built in bootcamp, etc etc.

asinclair · #6 February 28th, 2007, 04:37 AM

For one, I agree that the Finder is overdue for an overhaul, and I would be interested in seeing a file system that's entirely search-based, although the implications would be quite severe...

On the other side, I get the feeling that touch screen technology might be getting quite mature. We've seen what Apple has done on the iPhone, and I could well imagine working on an OS that's mostly touchscreen.

Some of you may have seen the following demo of that technology: http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalks....cfm?key=j_han
My impression is that it is maturing nicely, and it is quite likely Apple will be the first to bring it to the masses.

However, unless we foresee a complete overhaul of their computer lines, I expect that the technology will be built into the OS, but only available on future high-end Macs.

I will go out on a limb, and actually raise the question as to whether the current line of Mac might maybe already have built-in touchscreens...
Apple, with its skill in secrecy, would be quite capable to ship computers for years with that kind of hardware and not let it slip.
But probably that's just wishful thinking on my part. It would pain me greatly to find out the MacBook I bought two months ago would not be able to run Leopard to its full potential...

Tommo · #7 February 28th, 2007, 05:17 AM

Ora, I can well imagine applications not running under 10.5 that ran under 10.4. There have been cases of this on all previous upgrades, which have either been patched or the software discontinued for Mac. In the earlier days it would occasionally occur on point releases as well.

Mikuro · #8 February 28th, 2007, 05:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcart12

Finder will be replaced with an app that manages files in stacks based on spotlight meta-tags (Good bye to folders forever!).

I agree with this except for the replaced part. Stacks will make a great addition to the Finder. Folders aren't going anywhere. Ever. The user's reliance on them, however, most likely will.

Along those lines, I expect Leopard to let you assign your own tags to files arbitrarily. This should not be at the Spotlight level, but rather the file system level. HFS+ has support for this, and even Tiger has the ability to do it, although it's not used. I hope Apple will use file system metadata more and the Spotlight database less, because the Spotlight database is a nightmare in many ways. Ideally, Spotlight should only be used for caching data that can be re-created whenever needed (basically, as a time-saving measure). For instance, you can re-determine the size of a JPEG based on the file alone if the Spotlight database is damaged/erase, but you CANNOT re-determine the URL of a downloaded file, which Safari currently stores with Spotlight. This leads to unexpected data loss in many circumstances. Spotlight is not resilient enough to be the SOLE source of any information. That's why I expect Apple to make great use file system tags. (Microsoft was going to do something like this in Vista, but it got cut.)

As I've said before, I expect Leopard to have a scalable UI. Again, this almost made it into Tiger, and in early versions (10.4.0 - 10.4.3, IIRC) you could even play around with it if you installed the developer tools (using the Quartz Debug app). It worked decently, but had a lot of rough edges and no decent way to control it. If it makes it into Leopard, I suspect that A) Many of the UI elements (like close boxes, buttons and scroll bars) will be vector-based so they'll never look blocky, and B) An interface for controlling this will be present on every window; e.g., in addition to the resize box in the bottom-right corner of every window, there could be a scale box.

I expect higher-quality visual effects. Exposé is great, but it uses a very ugly scaling method. With the power of Core Image and Core Animation, enabling smooth scaling animations should be easy.

I do NOT expect a Finder that Doesn't Suck. I hope and I dream, but I do not expect...